Tough as Teflon: Ravel Technology (Part 1)

It's crazy...you can be sure the beurocrats and lawyers will make a nice living from this sort of idiocy.

It just goes to show that reliance on certificates of this that and the other is a waste of breath.

It would be easy to make fatuous sugestions like fight it in court...the financial and psychological cost in these maters is debilitating.

They have my complete sympathy.

Maybe the premises will catch fire and the insurance will pay out... ???

Baaaaad Kitty...

What about the attorney's, (which allot of bureaucrats use to be, and/or still are)

It is shameful that the state or any agency can merely dismiss a "clean 21E report" and hold the current tennant responsible for the assumed pollution of the past resident.

In reading the reports none claim to trace the pollution to the former garage which the machine shop now occupies. The bureaucrats assume the pollution comes from the general area which now invents a new rational for culpability and that is; guilt via proximity to the crime. In other words victims are now responsible for the crime.

Invalidating a clean 21 E report is another example of political influence overriding technical expertise. The "follow the money" theme resonates here with suspicions the legislature has spent the Superfund Site monies on other than the Sprague cleanup and now they want the innocent to pay for that extravagance.

When I purchased and/or sold industrial buildings for my endeavors, you have to have the enviromental reports done and the seller sign an affidavid that he knows of no problems on the property such as underground fuel tanks, dump sites and such.

Because how the law is. when you buy the land, you also but the liablity with that. And even if it's a report that may have come from a department from the government saying it's ok. Another department may say elsewise. And your stuck.

Never happened to me, but it is something that I was concerned about. Problem is the machine shop mentioned, I wonder if it was explained to them, not that it mattered. Back then if I received a report that ok'ed it, I would have been concerned, I would have gone ahead. Now I hold back or looked elsewhere.

<Because how the law is. when you buy the land, you also but the liablity with that.>

In English Law you buy a property with "all encumbence", which is another way of saying that there's no guarantee or money-back customer promise; it's a 'so long, sucker' process. Fortunately these days, an environmental search and report is part of the conveyancing process that all properties go through. Sellers of properties as small as three bedrooms are being forced to supply http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Information_Packs to indicate the basic information needed by a potential purchaser. Regional news reports might indicate that there is some controversy in this, then there may be an element of 'hype' to the story.

An environmental search and report (es&r)is done also, all this is, is to reinforce that there are no contaminents on the properties. And if there are contaminents found that was deposited there by a former owner, by having them sign off when the property was sold, the responsibility fall to them, unless the owner sold the land prior to before the se&r was required.

If this happened even though the prior owner signed off because to the best of their knowledge there was no " dumping or dump site" the current owner is liable. This is what was explain to me.

So, if the land has been industrial for more say 20 years, its a good just that it's contaminated.